Summer in Mossy Creek

by Deborah Smith

  “We’ll talk about it when you come by in the morning.”

  I had a pretty good idea how the conversation would go—and it did. I had a week to come up with a new set of stories. Oh, help.

  THE SATURDAY AFTER my storytelling debut, I stared at my laptop’s screen, then slumped in frustration.

  “My hero is tall, dark and dangerous,” I muttered. “How could he be boring?”

  Cht, mumbled Tweedle Dee. He was busy tugging on the gold chain attached to the tiger-eye pendant.

  “Right,” I said sourly. “He’s not small, blue and fluffy. How could he not be boring?”

  Cht.

  I’d been wearing that pendant, along with a long, scooped-neck dress, to try to get into the heroine’s skin, so to speak. But Tweedle couldn’t resist playing with my jewelry and kept landing on my chest. Unfortunately, bare skin doesn’t provide anything to hold onto. After the second time he slid headfirst into my bra, I took off the pendant and put it on the desk for him to play with.

  So there he was, giving me his best innocent look with his beak and one foot filled with gold chain.

  And something clicked.

  I opened a new file and my fingers danced on the keyboard as I wrote the story of “Tweedle Dee and the Jewel Thieves.” I had the setup (visiting my aunt, who owned a bed and breakfast on the coast of Maine). I had secondary characters (the sheriff, who was a friend of my aunt’s, and two gentlemen, who were staying at the B&B while touring the area to research the water-worn caves that, according to local lore, had been used by pirates of old). I had the problem (a series of jewel heists in the surrounding towns). And I had Tweedle Dee, the Houdini of parakeets, who always managed to escape from his cage and hide somewhere convenient in order to go on an outing with me.

  I had my second setup (a picnic on the small beach that was part of the B&B property). I had danger (Tweedle attracting the attention of a hungry gull and taking shelter in one of the caves). I had suspense (one of the guests entering that same cave and, upon whistling a particular sequence of notes, opening a hidden entrance behind which was a secret chamber filled with loot). I had more danger (the other gentlemen revealing A Clue that made my aunt and me realize her boarders were the jewel thieves) and an attempt to call for help on my aunt’s cell phone, which was thwarted when the thieves realized they’d been found out. Then there was the climax, with the thieves threatening my aunt and me, and Tweedle, sensing his people were in danger, bravely leaving the cave and, flying for his life while being chased by a whole flock of gulls, zipping past one of the thieves at the same moment I flung the plate piled with the picnic scraps at one thief and my aunt scooped up a handful of potato salad and hit the other one right between the eyes. The gulls, having lost sight of the blue budgie lunch special, weren’t about to give up the scraps, and the resulting food fight and birdy free-for-all successfully distracted the thieves until the sheriff’s timely arrival with his deputies. The thieves were taken into custody, the cave was located and Tweedle was able to whistle the particular sequence of notes that opened the hidden door, thus revealing the secret chamber and helping the sheriff recover the loot.

  It was the wee hours of the morning when, exhausted and gleeful, I ran off a copy of the story and made a backup copy on a disk. I put Tweedle back in his cage (he’d fallen asleep perched on top of the pendant) and fell into bed.

  The next morning, I read the story. It stretched reality to the point of being a tall tale, and I doubted there was an editor anywhere who would take it, but . . . maybe I could tell it at the next Thursday evening storytelling program at the Naked Bean.

  Energized by that thought, I spent most of the day working through the story while Tweedle preened his feathers and chirped encouragement.

  On Monday, I went to the Naked Bean just to take a walk and get out of the cottage for a while. But I didn’t stay as long as usual, being too eager to get back to working on the story.

  By late morning, I took a break for whistle time, mostly because Tweedle Dee was making such a racket I couldn’t talk over him. So I started out with the first songs——“Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” “On Top of Old Smokey,” and “The Water Is Wide.” They were the songs Tweedle whistled with me, joining in as a duet whenever I held a long note. Then I progressed to some of the new songs I was practicing. Or tried to. I was still having a lot of trouble hitting the notes in the next octave. Giving in to a need to vent a little, I took a deep breath and blew into the whistle, which sent Tweedle into a tizzy.

  Or maybe it was the banging on the front door that set him off.

  I dropped the whistle on a chair and hurried to the front door, reaching it at the same time Amos Royden, Chief of Police, opened the door and started to step into my little hallway.

  We stared at each other.

  “I was passing by and heard your smoke alarm go off,” Chief Royden said. “I thought you might need some help.”

  “Smoke alarm?” I said blankly.

  He frowned. “It’s stopped now.”

  I felt my face get really really hot. “Oh. That wasn’t the smoke alarm. That was ‘D.’”

  He looked puzzled. “Dee? The bird?”

  Cht cht cht.

  A free-flying budgie and an open door weren’t a good combination, so I stepped back and said, “Won’t you come in, Chief Royden?”

  Leading the way into the living room, I picked up the whistle. I played a note. Or tried to. “D.”

  He didn’t look puzzled any more. But he didn’t have time to say anything because Tweedle Dee shot off the top of his cage and flew toward us at a height that would have let him land on the top of my head but was a collision course with Chief Royden’s nose.

  The Chief ducked. As he straightened up, Tweedle circled around to land on his shoulder.

  “Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dee is me,” Tweedle Dee said happily.

  “Hey, Tweedle Dee,” Chief Royden replied cautiously.

  Deciding to show his favor, Tweedle whistled, “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” sour notes and all. Then, having done his share of entertaining our guest, he flew back to his cage to see if I’d put anything in the treat dish since the last time he’d checked.

  “Are you going to arrest me?” I asked.

  His eyes were twinkling again. “For imitating a smoke alarm with a penny whistle?”

  “No, for assaulting a police officer with a budgie.”

  Amos Royden laughed. “I like you, Laurie Grey.”

  I like you, too. “Thanks for stopping by, Chief.”

  He accepted the dismissal and left.

  I knew I was giving mixed signals, and I knew he was puzzled by it. It wasn’t because I didn’t like him, it was because I did. But that wasn’t something I wanted to explain, so if I couldn’t help giving mixed signals, I could be kind enough to keep my distance whenever possible.

  TWEEDLE DEE and the Jewel Thieves was a rousing success on Thursday evening. Amos Royden was there, but he left after telling me it was a fine story. I didn’t think anyone else paid attention to his quick departure.

  Shows you how much I knew about things like that.

  The next morning, still feeling that warm little glow of success, I sauntered up to the Naked Bean and noticed the new sign in the window.

  LAURIE GREY, STORYTELLER

  THURSDAY EVENINGS AT 7 P.M.

  That was definitely a warm fuzzy. It was the rest of the sign that had me whimpering.

  FOLK TALES

  FABLES

  FURTHER ADVENTURES OF TWEEDLE DEE

  As I rushed into the shop, Jayne looked at me and grinned. “Morning, Laurie. How do you like the sign?”

  “It’s great,” I stammered. “It’s wonderful. Really. But . . .”

  “But?”

  “But I
don’t have another Tweedle Dee story,” I wailed.

  Now, a rational, reasonable person who was also a friend would say something like, “Oh. Golly. I didn’t think of that. I’ll change the sign right away.” Or, “I just needed to fill up the space. No one will notice what stories you tell.”

  A rational, reasonable person who was also a friend would say something like that, wouldn’t she?

  What Jayne said was, “Then you’d better sit down and start writing, because folks are expecting another Tweedle Dee story on Thursday.”

  I slumped my way to “my” table, opened my notebook and stared at a page as blank as my mind.

  Actually, my mind was blanker. At least the page had those nice blue lines running across it.

  I drew a square and filled it in. I turned the square into a box and cross-hatched the other sides for shading. I drew a few spirals. I was working on something viney going all the way up the margin when Jayne brought over a cup of her specialty coffee and a couple of shortbread cookies.

  “You’re not writing,” she said.

  “I’m thinking.”

  “You’re not thinking, you’re just doodling.”

  “These are thinking doodles,” I said darkly.

  Guess I don’t do darkly well, because Jayne just said “Uh huh” and went about her work.

  I filled three pages with thinking doodles before I gave up and sulked my way back home to face an empty screen that didn’t even have nice blue lines going across it. But the laptop did have a paint program, so I spent the afternoon making computer-generated doodles.

  Over the weekend, I heard a whisper of something that gave me hope of finding another Tweedle Dee story, so Monday morning I was at the Naked Bean almost as soon as Jayne opened her doors. Amos Royden had gotten there before me.

  Sure that he would have the answer, I practically pounced on him—which he didn’t seem to mind until I said, “What do you know about the Ten-Cent Gypsy?”

  Jayne spilled coffee beans all over the counter, and Amos Royden got this look on his face, like someone who thought he’d been given a cookie and just discovered he’d swallowed a small toad.

  Before I could explain that I’d overheard the words “Ten-Cent Gypsy” and thought I could use it in a Tweedle-goes-adventuring-at-a-carnival story if I could just find out what it was, Amos muttered something that sounded like, “ThankyouGladtobehere,” and was out the door.

  Turning to Jayne, I said, “What did he say?”

  Apparently cleaning up spilled coffee beans causes temporary deafness because all I got at the Naked Bean that morning was coffee and too many shortbread cookies.

  I decided to try again on Tuesday afternoon when I did a storytelling program at the Magnolia Manor Nursing Home—an engagement that had been arranged by Eustene Oscar, whose mother was a resident of the home.

  After the program, I stopped to chat with Eustene, who just happened to be visiting her mother in time for the storytelling program. I tried to steer the conversation to the Ten-Cent Gypsy while Eustene kept steering it toward what a fine—and unattached—man Amos Royden was.

  Finally, I sighed. “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

  Eustene just smiled.

  “It’s because I’m a Yankee, isn’t it?”

  She patted my arm and said, “You’re too Southern to be a Yankee.”

  On the way home, I kept thinking that would be a great line for a story if I could figure out what it meant.

  TUESDAY EVENING, I was channel surfing, which usually drives me batty, and muttering about people who put roadblocks in the way of creative flow.

  “You started this,” I told Tweedle Dee, who was fluffed and comfy on the arm of the couch. “You come up with something.”

  He didn’t even cht at me, so I went back to channel surfing—until I came to an old Western. I have no idea what it was, but there were cowboys and cattle and—

  “That’s it!” I yelled, jumping up and startling Tweedle so much he fell off the couch.

  I shut off the TV, ran into the other room and fired up the laptop, completely ignoring Tweedle as he chittered and scolded me for scaring him.

  That evening I wrote “Tweedle Dee and the Stampede,” about how, during a visit to a friend who was working on a cattle ranch one summer, Tweedle prevented a troop of Boy Scouts doing an overnight Boy Scout thingie from being trampled by a herd of cattle by bravely flying off into the night to soothe the restless herd by whistling “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” all night long.

  When I told that story on Thursday night, I had a good idea of how many people in the audience had heard Tweedle whistle that tune by how hard they laughed.

  I called Nadine over the weekend, and when I got done telling her the story, she said, “How come I don’t get to be in a Tweedle Dee story?” So I wrote one about Tweedle staying with Nadine while I went off to a storytelling workshop and she got to play Dr. Watson to a little blue Sherlock Holmes. Or maybe it was a little blue Lassie. It was hard to tell sometimes.

  I sent her a copy of it and got back an email full of those shorthand thingies emailers use that I could never completely translate, but the gist of it was she liked the story.

  That story also established me as Mossy Creek’s resident storyteller. Besides weekly programs at the Naked Bean and Magnolia Manor, I started doing an every-other-week storytime at the library. I told stories during the Fourth of July festivities and a ghost story night in the town square in August. As the seasons changed, I did programs at the school, told Halloween stories at Pearl Quinlan’s bookstore, told Thanksgiving stories at a special storytime at the library—and I was there to celebrate a Mossy Creek Christmas.

  I spent Christmas evening quietly at home with Tweedle Dee, having already made merry for most of the day. While I lay on the couch watching It’s a Wonderful Life, with Tweedle snuggled up on my chest so that his little head rested against my chin, I realized I’d gotten the gift I’d wanted most. I’d gotten my pocket of time. And while I never did write that romantic epic, I’d written my Tweedle Dee stories, sweet and silly things that they were, and had amused and entertained people with them—and had been able to see and share that pleasure with the people who had become so very special to me.

  And I tried not to wonder too much about what Amos Royden thought of the Christmas present I’d left for him at the police station. It was one of my favorite Celtic CDs. I wasn’t even sure why I’d given it to him, except that I sometimes found myself wishing for a different ending, and I wanted to leave something for him to remember me by.

  I wanted to leave something for the rest of Mossy Creek, too—some tangible legacy that wouldn’t fade away with memory.

  Just before I dozed off, I realized I could do just that.

  ALL THROUGH THE winter months, I wrote Tweedle Dee stories. I polished them and practiced them, preparing each one to add to my legacy. I told friends I was indulging in a “creative hiberation” as a way to explain why I was spending more and more time at home—and also as a way of explaining why I was doing storytelling programs every other week at the Naked Bean and Magnolia Manor Nursing home and why, with regret, I was turning down other requests for storytelling programs. I still went to the Naked Bean a couple mornings a week to sit for an hour and watch the world, but I drove over instead of walking the short distance. And if Jayne or another friend asked if I was feeling all right, I would smile and say I was tired, just tired.

  The grace of a lie—and the grace of friends who accept it while suspecting it’s a lie.

  And then came the day when I barely had the strength to get out of bed. Too many storytelling programs. Too many late nights. I’d been working too hard. I was tired, just tired. That’s what I told myself while I used the walls to support my unsteady progress to the bathroom and then to the kitchen.

>   I knew that wasn’t true. I hadn’t expected to see another Christmas, let alone ring in another new year or see the spring flowers bloom. Now there was no denying that the bus on the Reaper & Scythe line only had a few more stops before it got to me.

  But there was still enough time. There had to be enough time.

  I felt a little stronger after some toast and orange juice—strong enough to call the sound studio in Bigelow and arrange to have the use of a recording room and a sound engineer for the three days I estimated I would need for what I wanted to do. They couldn’t accommodate me until the following week, so I made the other phone calls—one to Dr. Champion’s office to set up an appointment as soon as possible, one to my former doctor’s office to have my medical records available and one to Mac Campbell.

  While I waited to go to the various appointments, I made out careful lists.

  I saw Dr. Champion. There was nothing he could do except be the physician of record for what would come.

  I saw Mac Campbell. There were things he could do—and he did them.

  I also stopped at the police station and gave Sandy, the police dispatcher, a set of keys to the cottage.

  “I’m going out of town for a few days,” I said in explanation, “and I’d feel better if someone had a spare set.”

  Neither of us mentioned that Mac, as the attorney for the cottage’s owner, already had a spare set.

  “Do you need someone to feed Tweedle Dee?” Sandy asked.

  “No, I won’t be gone for more than two or three days. He’ll have plenty of food and water for that long.”

  And we left it at that.

  THE FOLLOWING WEEK, I set off bright and early one morning and made the twenty-minute drive to Bigelow. I’d found a hotel a few blocks from the sound studio and had booked a room so that I could save my strength. It was a wise thing to do. I worked hard during those days, and crawled back to the hotel each evening. By the afternoon of the third day, I’d done what I’d wanted to do.

  And when it was done, I told the men in the studio what I wanted, and when I needed to have it. And I told them why.